Green Bay Packers, Inc.
The Don Hutson Center
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| Founded | 1923 |
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| Legal status | publicly held nonprofit corporation |
| Mark H. Murphy | |
Green Bay Packers, Inc. is the official name of the publicly held nonprofit corporation that owns the Green Bay Packers football franchise of the National Football League (NFL).
The Packers are the only publicly owned franchise in the NFL. Rather than being the property of an individual, partnership, or corporate entity, they are held as of 2016 by 360,760 stockholders. No one is allowed to hold more than 200,000 shares, which represents approximately four percent of the 5,011,558 shares currently outstanding. It is this broad-based community support and non-profit structure which has kept the team in Green Bay for nearly a century in spite of being the smallest market in all of North American professional sports.
Green Bay is the only team with this public form of ownership structure in the NFL, grandfathered when the NFL's current ownership policy stipulating a maximum of 32 owners per team, with one holding a minimum 30% stake, was established in the 1980s. As a publicly held nonprofit, the Packers are also the only American major-league sports franchise to release its financial balance sheet every year.
Green Bay Packers, Inc., is governed by a seven-member Executive Committee elected from a 45-member board of directors. It consists of a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and three members-at-large; only the president is compensated. Responsibilities include directing corporate management, approving major capital expenditures, establishing broad policy, and monitoring management performance.
The team's elected president normally represents the Packers in NFL owners meetings. During his time as coach, Vince Lombardi generally represented the team at league meetings in his role as GM, except at owners-only meetings, where president Dominic Olejniczak appeared.
Even though it is referred to as "common stock" in corporate offering documents, a share of Packers stock does not share the same rights traditionally associated with or . It does not include an equity interest, does not pay dividends, cannot be traded, and has no securities-law protection. It also brings no season ticket purchase privileges. All shareholders receive are voting rights, an invitation to the corporation's annual meeting, and an opportunity to purchase exclusive shareholder-only merchandise. Shares of stock cannot be resold, except back to the team for a fraction of the original price. While new shares can be given as gifts, transfers are technically allowed only between immediate family members once ownership has been established.
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